This paper aims to explicate a complex interplay of socio-economic and cultural forces upon the rapid growth of the hand-weaving industry in an agricultural village in Ball. The focus of the paper is maintained on a particular type of traditional cloth, whose production primarily targets the domestic market. Although the cloth in question, the Balinese supplementary weft ikat or songket, is not directly connected with the tourist market or world-wide market of textile devotees, the historical background and present systems of its production present a curious mixture of surviving traditional contexts of hand-weaving and the influence of world capitalism. The village where the author conducted long-term research in 1991-1993, and then briefly in 1995, 1998, and 2000, is located in mountain areas of East Bali. It has acquired a reputation as one the weaving centres in Bali, by developing the production of two types of cloth since the early 1970s. Songket, woven on a traditional handloom called cagcag, is primarily used for ceremonial attire: wraparounds (kamben), men's hip cloths (sapuf), women's sashes (selendang), and men's head cloths (udeng). They are worn only for special, lavish ceremonies, such as large-scale weddings and tooth-filing rites, or social functions such as graduation ceremonies and formal parties. Another type of cloth, endek, is a weft-ikat which is woven on treadle looms (ATBM) in the workshops owned by local entrepreneurs. Much cheaper than songket and easier to be used as materials, its market has been extended to Java and even to overseas. It is said that the songket cloth has had a long-standing link with the nobles : the three upper classes in the traditional hierarchy. Especially those using expensive, imported materials such as silk and gold threads could be made and worn only by those particularly privileged among royal and aristocratic families. After temporary interruption during the Japanese occupation period and the aftermath of the Revolution, the production of songket revived at the end of 1950s and rapidly expanded during the 1970s and 1980s. This growth was facilitated by a number of factors: changing regional economy, penetration of the money economy into the villages, and the development of the tourist industry. The last factor in particular explains a steady increase in demand for this traditional, sumptuous cloth, because those who gained access to tourist income were willing to pay for the additional value attached to it, that of being associated with aristocrats and Balinese ethnic identity. At the same time, the Indonesian government encouraged small-scale industries, especially cottage production of handicrafts and extended various programmes for assistance. In particular, handicrafts industries won the favour of policy-makers, who designed women-oriented development programmes. It was primarily because home-based production of handicrafts could enable rural women to combine their new economic undertakings with their primary, domestic duties as wives and mothers. One of the examples of official assistance programmes is a low-interest-rate credit scheme under the name of Kredit Inkra (credit for handicraft industries). Participants of this scheme received a loan of 275,000 rupiah as initial capital to purchase the handloom and yarns. Yet as it turned out, most women could not keep up with the monthly payments and the whole scheme collapsed in the study village. The failure of this credit scheme pointedly illustrates the nature of the problem for the village weavers. Aside from the role of contributing to household income through weaving, women are obliged to perform many other duties, including domestic chores and, more importantly, religious responsibilities. Therefore, any institutional support for their economic activities should give consideration to an inevitable instability of production rates, which is

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This article is a study about a Tai Dam village society in northwestern Vietnam and the influences of the recent government introduction of a market economy. In most of Tai Dam villages of northwestern Vietnam, every household is nearly self-sufficient in food, combining the cultivation of rice, swidden farming and vegetable gardens. These days, factory-made cloth is also popular in Tai Dam villages. Nonetheless, cotton spinning, textile weaving and indigo dyeing is still performed in the village. I focus in particular on traditional textile production, especially that of the pieu, a headscarf worn by Tai Dam women. Although the pieu is an item of daily wear, it sometimes also functions as an object of gift exchange with symbolic meanings. As a result, many ethnographers have studied the pieu, concentrating mainly on its style and design rather than socioeconomic factors such as the division of labor in the production process or the relationship between pieu production and other production activities in their village life. Additionally, many ethnographers have essentialized Tai Dam material culture, disregarding historical changes in style, materials and the production process itself. In this article I will analyze the present situation of pieu production in a Tai Dam village in relation to the Vietnamese government introduction of a market economy system since 1986, the so-called Doi Moi policy, and consider the village's socioeconomic situation. Through this analysis, I will clarify in concrete terms the influence of the market economy on the village's socioeconomic life. In this article, I reconstruct the traditional pieu production process that involves cotton spinning, textile weaving, indigo dyeing and decoration. I clarify issues of contemporary uses of style and materials in pieu production in relation to the recent government introduction of a market economy and recent changes in the ecological environment of northwestern Vietnam. The once common sight of women fluffing up cotton in Tai Dam villages has declined in recent times due to the introduction of the fluffing machine (powered by a hydraulic turbine). Village women have been freed from this strenuous preparatory work through the use of cash payments to the owner of the machine. Furthermore, there are now fewer households raising silkworms. This decline is connected with the change in materials used to produce the pieu. Silk thread produced with natural dyes has been vanishing as factory-made cotton thread has come into popular use for pieu embroidery, and for factory-made red cloth that has been used to make the frills. These changes are tied to the influence of the government introduction of a market economy and the change of northwestern Vietnam's ecology. The population has increased rapidly since the end of the Vietnam War. This has led to an expansion in swidden farming and encouraged the demand for timber. Additionally, the lifting of commercial activities restrictions legislated in the Doi Moi policy has also contributed to deforestation. The resulting shortage of uncultivated land, as well as soil infertility caused by deforestation has led to an expansion of manioc cultivation and a reduction of cotton farming. The use of new materials in pieu production is having an impact on style and design. Colors have become brighter because of the availability of colored commercial cotton thread and artificial dyes. This thread is these days used more for pieu decoration than it was prior to the 1990s. This means an increase in the use of cash has become necessary in pieu production. The purpose of this article, however, is not merely to clarify changes in pieu style, materials, or the production process. It is very important to recognize that these changes are tied up with an increase in the use of cash in pieu production. In order to determine present pieu production conditions, I investigated

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Batik in Java has become a cultural icon of Indonesia. Alongside with the old technique of hand-drawn batik, the stamping method was invented in the 1840s, which increased the productivity of batik enormously. Combining this new method with the old hand-drawn one, many new batik firms developed into the early part of the twentieth century. This article aims to depict the ongoing marginalization of the modern tradition of batik making. The batik industry kept thriving even through the 1970s as there was an ample domestic demand for their products. This sustained demand was partly supported by a new trend of clothing then emerging in Indonesia. Starting in the 1960s several batik designers began utilizing batik for Western-style long sleeve shirts. Though this new fashion looked strange for many people, it became so trendy especially after top rank politicians and high officials adopted it in the early 1970s as formal dress a la Indonesia. The use of batik for any kind of western-style clothing spread quickly soon after that. In the 1980s, however, a serious blow fell on the batik industry, that is, the quick development of print batik. Print batik is made by methods of hand screen printing or mechanized roller printing. Since these methods do not involve wax-resisting dyeing, it is actually dubious whether their products can be called batik. According to the late Mr. Soemihardjo, a well-known batik designer and producer in Yogyakarta, an early experiment of print batik by Indonesians was done in 1950 at the Institute of Textile Technology at Bandung with the advice and help of ICI, a British chemical firm. Its commercial production began in several batik-producing centers in Java in the 1970s. At this initial stage, print batik did not threaten the traditional methods of batik making because its low quality was obvious to consumers of batik. The technique of the print method, however, developed so rapidly into the 1980s that even knowledgeable consumers could hardly tell it from traditional batik. While high-grade batik with the hand-waxing method could still compete with print batik, most hard hit was low-grade batik, whether it was made by hand-drawn or stamp methods. This meant that many batik makers lost their most important source of income as the low-grade batik provided them with large sales volumes and quick turnover. Besides the threat by print batik, the quick development of huge, fully mechanized textile firms in Indonesia from the 1970s took its toll of more traditional batik makers. People now could purchase mass-produced textiles and garments for a price cheaper than batik. Many batik makers gave up their business ; they went bankrupt or turned to other sectors. In the city of Yogyakarta, the number of batik makers, which amounted to more than 900, has decreased to 90 now. In Laweyan, a neighborhood of batik makers in Solo which used to symbolize the prosperity of the batik industry in Java, one can hardly find anyone who still continues making batik. Ponorogo, a district in East Java which in the golden era of GKBI (Indonesian National Association of Batik Cooperatives) was counted as the fourth largest batik producing center in Indonesia, has suffered the same fate. Print batik now accounts for about 90 percent of the annual production of batik in quantitative terms. About this technological change from the wax-resisting to the printing methods, we have to ask if it is another technological innovation within the batik industry, or an external threat to it. This involves a difficult question about the definition of batik. There are people who categorically reject print batik. This view has a strong case since the artistic value of batik cannot be separated from the traditional method of wax-resisting dyeing. However, we cannot just ignore the economic reality that print batik is cheap and many consumers cannot distinguish it from traditional batik. Only after

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